Delving In and Out of Madness
by Lena the Dreamer
Summary: Five times where Winter's Lunar Sickness gets the better of her. For all of y'all like me that like to cry at shit like this.


The first time it happened, she barely noticed it. The first hallucination had come only weeks after she had stopped using her Lunar gift and Jacin was only a few months into the guard program. They didn't even know what to expect.

She had been sitting at the vanity in her bedroom, surrounded by various hair clips and make up and crown jewelry. Although her maid had offered to prepare her hair for her, Winter quite liked the methodical process of separating her coily locks into an elegant hairstyle. Besides, the maid would have wanted to hide the three long scars on the right side of her face.

She touched the scars fondly, their raised edges rough against her soft fingers. Although the scars were almost a year old, they were still pink. As she took her hand away, she saw a spindly leg on the back of her hand out of the corner of her eye. She gasped slightly, staring more intently at her hand, seeing the small black spider crawling over her hand. She blinked hard and it was gone. Confused, she blinked again, but the phantom spider did not reappear. She shook her head, ridding her mind of the image and continued pinning up her hair.

There was a soft knock at her door. Padding across the floor in slippered feet, she opened the door to see Jacin, standing ramrod straight, his training already taking effect.

"Jacin!" Winter said delightedly, "What a surprise!"

"Your Highness," he said stiffly, "I've been instructed to escort you to the terminal to greet the new thaumaturges." Winter's smile faltered slightly. Although Jacin wasn't a guard yet, he had already begun to treat her differently from before. His easy nature with her was gone.

"Already?" she asked in a melodic tone, "I wanted to show you my new painting!" she stepped back into her room, gesturing for him to come in. Jacin pressed his lips together.

"I'm afraid the Queen has requested your presence immediately," he said tightly.

"Oh, alright," Disappointed, Winter turned back to her vanity to grab the tiara comb waiting for her on a tiny blue pillow. As she went to reach for it, two black spiders scurried out from underneath the tiara. Her eyes widened and she froze. She blinked rapidly, but the spiders did not disappear.

"Princess?" Jacin called from the door, "The Queen is waiting," Again, Winter blinked and the spiders vanished. Confused, she reached for the tiara, sliding the prongs into the front of her hair. She turned to face Jacin, and forced herself to smile, despite the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I'm ready now,"

* * *

Winter filed into the banquet hall after her stepmother, guards behind her. Although Jacin had escorted her to the docks, he now stood with the other novice guards lining the walls.

As Winter and her stepmother were seated, the hall filled with the new thaumaturges and nobles. Recently promoted Thaumaturge Aimery Park was sitting on her left. Whispers had spread through the palace that Aimery Park was a cruel man, who abused many, but Winter maintained her polite smile in the presence of Thaumaturge Park and Queen Levana.

As they ate, Winter could feel Aimery's gaze travel over her body, attaching itself to her lips, her scars, her breasts, her curves, her waist, a feeling she was becoming used to. She tried her best not to shudder, trying to keep up their civil conversation.

"They say you are quite skilled, Thaumaturge Park, I'm gracious that you are here to protect those of us in Artemesia," she said with a polite smile.

"It is a pleasure to serve you, your Highness," he replied with a leering smirk. Winter's eyes flickered to her stepmother next to them, who seemed to be in deep conversation with the noblewoman next to her, but Winter knew she was listening to her and Aimery.

Unnerved, Winter looked down at her plate of half-eaten food. Suddenly, a spider shot out from under her plate on its spindly legs, crawling its way up her arm. Winter gasped, frantically trying to brush it off her arm, but she could not see the spider anymore.

"Princess? What's the matter?" Aimery asked, but his concern sounded fake.

"I.. " Winter looked up to see the people around her staring, her stepmother slightly pursing her lips. "I'm fine, I-I thought I saw a spider," she looked across the room and could see Jacin breaking protocol, looking at her worriedly. Breathing quickly, she turned back to her plate.

For the rest of the dinner, Winter ate and conversed uneasily. As she was escorted back to her room by two guards, Jacin hurried up to her side, having changed out of his novice uniform. When Jacin was out of the uniform, he was regular Jacin again. Winter smiled, happy to see a friendly face.

"Hello," she said warmly. He returned her smile tentatively, glancing at the guards behind them. "Free from your duties as a noble guard?" His smile grew, his posture shifting into a more comfortable stance from the stiff look all guards possessed.

"Indeed, your Highness,"

"Well, then you won't mind accompanying me so I can show you the new painting I finished," The landscape she had created was a scene from the menagerie that Winter loved to frequent, portraying the vintage iron cages in the artificial afternoon sun.

"I would love to Princess, but I'll have to come by later, I have to see the captain of the novices first," Jacin replied, his expression regretful. Winter's smile faltered, disappointed at how much of his time was being taken up by the life that was thrust upon him by the Queen. Winter knew Jacin's secret endeavor, to be a doctor, to help people, but she also knew that there was nothing either of them could do.

"Ok!" she kept up her happy tone as Jacin bid her farewell and turned down a different hallway. When she reached her room, Winter immediately went for an old music player that had come from Earth many years ago and had been past down through her mother's family, one of the only things from her mother Levana had permitted her to keep. When she and Jacin were children, they had enjoyed playing the vintage music and dancing around her old home.

Presently, Winter put on one of her favorite songs and kicked off her shoes. She changed from her evening gown into soft, flowy pants and an old shirt, plucking off her jewelry.

She walked over to the corner of her room that, over the years, had become her art studio of sorts. Various portraits and landscapes cluttered the floor, some rejects, others half-finished gifts for people in the town, the rest ones she couldn't bear to part with. There was a painting of her old house, of the small wolf cub that had been brought to the menagerie two weeks ago, one of Jacin when she had convinced him to sit still long enough and her favourite, hidden away from her stepmother, a portrait of her parents that she had composed through her memory and secret pictures.

Winter smiled at the newly finished painting, still on her easel. The brushstrokes depicting the sunlight streaming through the bars of the enclosures had been particularly difficult and she was excited to show Jacin the product of her hard work.

Faintly, she heard a strange sound in her ear, like her hair was moving back and forth, yet there was no wind in the room. With a strange apprehensive feeling in the pit of her stomach, Winter reached her hand up to her ear. The second her finger brushed against her hair, something moved. She yelped, snatching her hand back to see dozens of the same spiders from before crawling up her hand.

Winter gasped, and frantically shook her hand, trying to fling off the spiders. The spiders scuttled down her leg onto the ground and began to advance on Winter, pushing her backwards into the large window that overlooked the orchard beneath. The windows were framed by large, red, velvet curtains that reminded Winter of bird wings.

She gasped again when her back hit the window, feeling the cold through her thin shirt. The spiders drew closer to her, crawling up her legs, her arms, the curtains, to her face. She turned her face away in fright to see a small pair of knitting shears sitting on the windowsill. In her frenzy, Winter noticed that they were gold and ornamental, but looked sharp enough to kill a spider.

Usually, Winter hated to harm anything living, human or animal. She had once teared up when she had accidentally crushed a beetle underfoot. But now, her only thoughts were of the spiders, crawling up and consuming her, boring into her eyes and mouth and nose, suffocating and blinding her, eating away at her being until there was only a pile of clothes and a tiara comb left.

Although Winter couldn't feel the cool metal of the scissors on her skin as her finger closed around them, she could see spindly black legs all around her eyes. Although she couldn't hear the tap on the door and Jacin's inquiring voice, she could feel tiny movements all up her arms and throat.

Before her brain had caught up to what her arms were doing, she had grasped the scissors in both hands and was stabbing the curtains next to her. She stabbed wildly at anything she saw moving, shredding the red velvet in the process. It did no good, however, and the spiders simply moved from he curtains to her left hand.

Madly, she held the hand swarmed with tiny black bodies far away from her and sliced at her palm with the now open scissors in the other hand. Winter could see the red blood leaking from her hand, but couldn't comprehend the pain or the shriek that was ripped from her throat.

Now, in fact, Winter abandoned all comprehension as she stabbed and sliced and jabbed wildly at anything she could reach, the curtains and the window and the vase of fake flowers of the windowsill.

She stayed in that frenzied haze until two strong hands pulled her backwards and spun her away from the window. Winter looked up through black dots and tears to see Jacin's panicked, heartbroken face

"Winter!" he shouted, pain and shock in his voice, "Winter, what are you _doing_?"

She gasped and stuttered, trying to explain, trying to call out for his help.

"I- I… the- there are" she sobbed dryly, her fear and pain pouring out of her in tears. "There are spiders- _everywhere_ , Jacin, they- they're crawling up my arms and-..."

Jacin held her firmly by her shoulders, looking behind her from the tattered curtains and shattered vase to the scissors in her hand flecked in the blood coming from her hand.

"Shit, Winter- Princess, there aren't any spiders, what…?" he whispered, confused. When she tried to turn her head back to see, he held her face firmly, his long fingers cradling the back of her neck.

"But… but I…" she faltered, her tears spilling off her cheeks onto Jacin's wrists. They held each other's gaze when Jacin's eyes widened and then darkened, in a clarity that he didn't want to be true.

"The Lunar sickness," he said grimly, "It causes hallucinations, _vivid_ hallucinations, that develop into…" he pursed his lips, "into madness."

Winter's mouth opened in disbelief looking down to her hands so she could show Jacin that they were real, that this was not a hallucination, but there were no spiders to be seen. She began to shake, dropping the scissors and they clattered on the ground. She reached up to hold Jacin's forearms, tightly, she breath shaking out of her.

"What… what do I do?"

He pressed his lips even tighter together and pulled his hands down away from her, her blood staining his right arm. Winter's hands hovered like he was still there. "Jacin…"

"I don't know, Princess. I… if I still had my psychology books…" he broke off looking at the ground, his hands back behind his back in the guard stance. Winter weaved her hands through her hair, pulling it to ragian some sense.

"So this, this will keep happening?" she asked. His look confirmed her suspicions. She breathed out shakily. "How will I know what's real and what's not?"

He looked up at her sharply, his eyes a mix of emotions. There was pain and worry, all masked by a facade of strength.

"I'll be here to help you Princess,"

"Always?"

" _ **Always**_ ,"


End file.
